End of Tenancy Cleaning in West Dulwich

Rosendale Road curves between Dulwich and West Norwood, and the houses on the west side look across to the allotments and the edge of Belair Park. They're big Victorian semis set back from the road behind front gardens that most people have kept as actual gardens — privet hedges, tiled paths, the occasional magnolia. The one we were doing was about halfway along, with a bay window that ran the full height of the frontage and a stained-glass panel in the front door that threw coloured light across the hallway floor at 9am.

Four bedrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen-diner extended to the rear, a family bathroom, an en-suite shower room, a ground-floor WC, and a garden that ran about 80 feet to a back fence beyond which you could see the trees of Belair Park. The family had been there 3 years — two parents, two children aged 12 and 9. Both children at one of the Dulwich schools. He worked in the City. She worked in publishing and did two days from home. £3,100 a month. Managed by Hamptons from their Dulwich office on Red Post Hill.

Parked on the driveway. This section of Rosendale Road was unrestricted. Three of us on the job.

Kitchen-diner first. The rear extension had created an L-shaped kitchen-diner of about 18 sqm with French doors to the garden. A Falcon range cooker — double oven, five gas burners, a grill. Three years of a family that cooked every day. The publishing parent worked from home two days a week and cooked lunch on those days, which meant the main oven had more than the standard five-evening-meals-a-week pattern. Both ovens heavy. Main oven: double dwell, two passes on everything, third pass on the roof. Secondary oven: double dwell, one pass. Grill: heavy, soaked for the full duration of the kitchen clean. Total oven time: 48 minutes.

Quartz worktop — wiped with specialist product. Sink descaled. Integrated fridge-freezer cleaned. Dishwasher interior cleaned, seal wiped. Inside all the cupboards — a lot of cupboards in an 18 sqm kitchen. French doors to the garden: glass cleaned, both doors. The threshold — stone — had mud, leaf fragments, and the kind of fine grit that blows in from a long garden with mature trees. Cleaned. Behind the range: pulled out carefully — ranges are heavy — wall degreased. A birthday cake candle, the number 9. Kitchen total: 65 minutes.

Front reception room. A double-height bay window — 4-over-4 sashes, three sides, 48 panes. Stained glass in the fanlight above the bay. Panes cleaned, fanlight wiped dry only. An original fireplace — a marble surround, white with grey veining, cast-iron insert with decorative tiles. The marble was in good condition. Wiped with pH-neutral product, barely damp. The tiles wiped. Iron dry-cleaned. Hearth — slate — vacuumed and wiped. Picture rail dusted. Cornicing dusted — ceilings at about 3.3 metres. Original floorboards — lacquered — mopped. 24 minutes.

Rear reception room. Carpeted, vacuumed. A sash window to the garden — 6-over-6. A simpler fireplace — painted timber surround with a slate hearth. Wiped. 10 minutes.

Family bathroom. First floor. A white suite — separate shower enclosure with frameless glass, a freestanding roll-top bath, pedestal basin, close-coupled toilet. Three years of hard water and a family of four. The shower glass had thick limescale on the lower half. Triple descaler — this was a 3-year screen in SE21 hard water, same territory as the Tolworth triple-pass but on a more expensive screen. The roll-top bath was the challenge. A freestanding bath has exposed pipework at the rear and underneath, and every piece of chrome collects limescale where the water pools and drips. The visible surfaces descaled normally. The rear pipework — we got behind the bath with a cloth and descaler and cleaned every exposed pipe and fitting. That's 8 minutes just on the pipework that nobody sees unless they look behind the bath, which the Hamptons clerk would. Bath waterline — visible but manageable. Taps — moderate crusts. Toilet — calcium. Standard soak. Floor — encaustic tiles — mopped with pH-neutral product. 34 minutes.

En-suite. Walk-in shower, wall-hung basin, wall-hung toilet. Light use — mostly the parents. Single descaler pass. 12 minutes.

Ground-floor WC. Tap descaled, toilet soaked. 5 minutes.

Four bedrooms. Master: carpeted, vacuumed. Bay window at the front — sash, 32 panes. Brass door handle polished. Built-in wardrobe wiped inside. 16 minutes. Second bedroom: carpeted, vacuumed, sash window, wardrobe wiped. 10 minutes. Older child's room: carpet vacuumed. Sash window cleaned. A desk with a reading lamp — the landlord's. Wiped. The wall above the desk had a small piece of Blu-Tack residue at about 150cm — the height of a revision timetable stuck to the wall by a 12-year-old preparing for an exam. Removed. The paint beneath was fine. 9 minutes. Younger child's room: carpet vacuumed. Sash window cleaned. The windowsill had a row of small stones — not pebbles from a beach, smooth flat stones from Dulwich Park's paths, each about the size of a 50p piece, arranged by colour from lightest to darkest. Seven stones. They'd left no marks. We moved them to the bed, cleaned the sill, and placed them back in the same colour order. 9 minutes.

Hallway: encaustic tiles — the geometric pattern in black, terracotta, and cream that runs from the front door to the stairs. Swept, mopped with pH-neutral product. The stained-glass panel in the front door threw coloured light across the tiles at 9am and you could see the mop lines in the light, so we mopped again to ensure even coverage. Front door wiped. Brass letterbox and knocker polished. 8 minutes.

Stairs: carpeted, vacuumed — three flights. 7 minutes.

Total time: 5 hours. Three people. A 4-bed Victorian semi where the range cooker took 48 minutes, the family bathroom with the roll-top bath took 34, the sash windows took 45 minutes across the house, and the hallway needed mopping twice because the stained glass showed the lines. A house where the schools keep the families and the families keep the houses and the houses need cleaning properly when one family leaves and the next arrives.

Hamptons' inventory clerk arrived three days later. She had a tablet with a digital inventory and the check-in photos from 3 years earlier. She drove from the Dulwich office — a 3-minute drive down Red Post Hill.

Hallway: encaustic tiles — she crouched and looked across the surface at floor level. Clean, even, matte, no mop lines. Stained glass: she looked at it. Clean, leading intact. Brass letterbox: she touched it. Smooth, warm sheen.

Kitchen: range cooker — both ovens opened, torch in. Main oven roof: triple-pass zone. Clean. Secondary oven: clean. Quartz worktop: she ran a hand across near the hob. Clean. French door threshold: she looked down. Clean. She opened the cupboard beside the fridge. Clean. She didn't pull the range out. She asked if we'd done it. We said yes. She noted it. The birthday candle was on the counter. She glanced at it.

Family bathroom: she went straight to the roll-top bath. She crouched behind it and looked at the exposed pipework. Clean. That was the check. The pipework behind a freestanding bath is the tell — if the cleaning team has done it properly, every pipe and fitting is descaled. If they haven't, the rear chrome is still white. She stood up. Shower glass angle-tested. Floor tiles checked. Toilet crouched.

Older child's room: Blu-Tack location checked. Clean. Younger child's room: she looked at the stones on the windowsill. She didn't touch them. She looked at the sill beside them. Clean. She noted the stones as tenant property.

Fourteen minutes. Everything passed on the cleaning. The stones and the birthday candle were noted as tenant property. The check-in report was updated and filed.

Deposit returned in full within 11 days. The family moved to a 5-bed on Dulwich Wood Avenue — the upgrade path in West Dulwich, trading up from the Victorian terraces to the 1920s detached houses with bigger gardens and a driveway that fits two cars. The stones went with them, still in colour order, headed for a new windowsill in a bigger room with a view of more park and more paths and more stones to collect. The birthday candle stayed behind, the number 9 on a kitchen counter, a small marker of the year a child turned 9 in a house on Rosendale Road.